Probability Curves
by forever fan
Summary: A New Year's Day dawn brings memories of many firsts in Professor Harold Everett's life.


Title: Probability Curves

Author: Forever Fan

Email: 

Rating: T

Spoilers: Pilot, The Philosopher's Stone, The Art of Relationships, Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh

Category: Romance; vignette

Disclaimer: This property belongs to David Gerber Productions and FOX Television.

I make no profit and intend no infringement.

Summary: A New Year's Day dawn brings memories of many first in Professor Harold Everett's life.

Feedback: Yes, please

Professor Harold Everett stood in front of the wide window watching the eastern sky. The sun would rise soon, the black night sky just beginning to turn indigo on the horizon. It was January first, the first morning of the first day of the New Year. A door suddenly opened behind him and a blast of cold air followed a hurried young man in from outdoors. The Professor shivered, but was glad for the fresh air. It revived him after a long and stressful night. Taking in a deep lungful of air, he let out the breath on a sigh. He was tired and wondered for an instant if he was getting too old to stay up all night. Then he grinned to himself. Staying up all night on New Year's Eve was a tradition he intended to keep up for a few years longer, and this New Year's Eve had been like no other.

The cold air had cleared away some of the Professor's fatigue and encroaching mental fog. This dawn of the first day of a new year brought back memories of other firsts in his life. He remembered as far back as his first day of school, his first two wheeler bike, his first crush, his first job, his first real love.

Memories of his late wife were always bittersweet. He thought back on their first meeting, first date, first kiss, and their first child. The thoughts of his first glimpse of each of his children behind the nursery glass brought a lump to his throat. Each one had been a rosy cheeked, chubby, cherub – squalling and spitting up and perfect. He smiled now thinking of each child's 'firsts": first words, first steps, first teeth, and first days starting school.

The children. The Professor knew he should telephone them, but the day hadn't really begun and he hated to wake them so early. Besides, he would be called soon and didn't want to miss the chance to add another "first" to his memories.

He looked anxiously at the open doorway that led to a long, silent hallway. Were things taking too long? The Professor sighed again and decided he was worrying himself needlessly. A glance at his watch made him realize he hadn't really been waiting very long at all. He had more time with his reminiscences still.

What was it about a sleepless night that gave an odd clarity to thinking? What made sleepless nights a time to remember? Perhaps it was sleep deprivation that led to a slipping between states of consciousness? Maybe he was really dreaming while awake? There was probably a scientific explanation for his reverie but he was just too tired to figure it out now.

A man of science, Professor Everett devoted his life to figuring things out in the natural world, and he was not a man prone to indulging fancies or fantasies. He couldn't help but consider the unlikely probability that he would find himself in this particular situation on this morning. His life had been a planned and structured one, and despite having been widowed at a relatively young age, he knew the chances were he would find a suitable woman and remarry someday. The Professor's idea of an ideal woman would be one that shared his interests and his ordered view of the world. Then the brief period of chaos that had reined in his life the first year after his wife's death would vanish as he brought such a woman into the family. He had even begun to notice some of the attractive, intelligent and eligible women on campus and was considering dating again.

Unfortunately, things at home had not settled enough for him to feel comfortable leaving his three, young, trouble makers alone in the care of any of the female family retainers that had paraded through his home for any longer than was strictly necessary. It appeared as if every six weeks or so there was another housekeeper for him to orient and for the children to challenge. And each child seemed to take delight in their new found hobby of tormenting the domestic help. The Professor was determined not to thwart the children's creativity or emerging personalities, but not at the risk of having no harmony in the household at all. And he was just about out of probable solutions or reasonable suggestions.

And that was when Nanny had shown up. He remembered the first time he saw Miss Phoebe Figalilly. Beautiful and bright, her face was as fresh as the morning and as open and animated as a child's. Her smile was infectious and her light, lyrical voice as pleasurable to listen to as music. The Professor was enchanted with her from the beginning and her settling into his household seemed as effortless as if they had all been waiting for her to take her place. And perhaps they had been waiting. He felt as if he had been waiting for her forever, and upon entering his life she seemed to pick up and mend the pieces he hadn't fully realized were broken. It all appeared so seamless now, as if fate had determined their destinies. Ruefully the Professor shook his head. Sleep deprivation was making him believe in things he knew his rational mind did not. He tried to convince himself his usual way of thinking would return with the dawn.

The dawn. A quick look out the window confirmed it wasn't here yet. Perhaps that was why his mind was so full of memories that seemed like dreams. And that thought reminded him of the first time he had dreamed of Nanny, only weeks after her arrival. It was a dream he had felt embarrassed to recall. He told himself it was merely his subconscious revealing his healthy and normal attraction to a young, beautiful woman in his life. It wasn't as if he had any intention on acting on the dream or the attraction. Still, the Professor remembered how the dream had lingered in his thoughts for days, and how clearly he could recall it still. It was the first time his conscious mind allowed him to realize just how attracted he was to his children's nanny, and how desirable he found her as a woman. It made him feel both uncomfortable and strangely content at the same time. It made him feel as if the family was now complete with a mother _and _a wife again although he hadn't so much as held her hand. In fact, it was shortly after that dream that he began dating again, as much due to the convenience of having a full-time babysitter as to convince himself he had no romantic designs on the domestic help.

For awhile that tactic seemed to work. The Professor continued to date fairly regularly, but no one he considered special, and no one woman for very long. He reminded himself he was a carefree bachelor again and that he didn't want to be tied down to one woman. But the fact was he began to suspect that he was tied to one woman. He enjoyed dating different women, liked their company and their attention, but what the Professor liked even more was coming home. Coming home now to a well-ordered house, well-behaved and loving children, and well…to her. He enjoyed Nanny's company and attention as well, and it was pleasant to tease her and flirt with her in a very chaste manner. There seemed to be no need to explore other possibilities, as tempting as they could be at times.

It wasn't always easy, but the Professor had become quite adept at ignoring the warmth in Nanny's eyes and the quickness of her smile when she looked at him. He supposed, after plenty of practice, he could make himself not notice her familiar, subtle scent, shapely legs, flawless skin and gentle laugh. But there were other times he didn't know how he resisted touching her soft, bright hair or reaching an arm around the curve of her small waist. And there had also been times he could have sworn she'd wanted him to give into those enticements.

The conflict Professor Everett felt, if there was any at all, was not in how he could be attracted to a beautiful, warm woman with a kind and generous nature, but in how those feelings could grow for a woman who believed in fate, ghosts, precognition, magic, miracles, astrology and wiblets! A woman who could know things she couldn't know and do things she couldn't do, that wasn't just a variance between a man's world view and a woman's, but between the seen and unseen world. He could accept his late wife's gentle intuitions, even her flights of fancy, but those paled in comparison to Nanny's unorthodox belief system that bordered on not just the metaphysical but on the occult.

The Professor often found himself seeking rational and scientific accounts for the frustrating and irritating consistent everyday occurrences he couldn't explain that existed far outside of any probability curve. He even discovered, at times, this paradoxically made him a more diligent and thoughtful scientist. He began to realize there was more of an art to understanding scientific principles than he had previously believed, and opened up his mind, and eventually his heart, to the more extreme possibilities of science and nature. On the occasions he couldn't come up with a completely satisfactory logical explanation, he discovered he was becoming more at ease with the probability that there was no reasonable explanation at all.

During the time he began to question some of his longest held convictions, an event occurred that made Harold Everett uncomfortably aware of his exasperation and irrational petty jealousy when a womanizing psychology professor began showering Nanny with attention. The man even claimed to be in love with Nanny after knowing her less than a week! Still, he chalked those feeling up to his concern for her safety and well-being. After all, Nanny was a sweet, trusting, and old-fashioned kind of woman with traditional values and modesty. Would she be able to defend herself against a man whose moniker was "Swinging Sam"? The Professor had to admit to great relief when "Swinging Sam" had gone back to his former girlfriend.

That was not so easy for himself. Attempting to reconnect with Maureen Peters proved impossible for him after she had erroneously spied what she thought was his proposal, on bended knee, to Nanny. Even after his amusing explanation, Maureen had hung up on him, but not before telling him he, "obviously has some unresolved feelings for the help." At first he had been disappointed, but his relief at knowing family harmony would be undisturbed, plus a suddenly free evening spent pleasantly in Nanny's company in front of the fire, put all thoughts or regrets about Maureen out of his mind permanently.

And things could have gone on that way indefinitely had other outside incidents not happened that began challenging the Professor's complacent attitudes. First, Nanny's relatives began dropping in with a regularity he later discovered occurred for the express purpose of taking her away. Her family considered her long stay with the Everett's an aberration for her, and they all seemed determined to find out why. Nanny's usual wanderlust appeared over, or at least stalled, and that concerned a family who appeared to pride eccentricity and freedom of spirit over settling down to a job or to a family. And as much as he had enjoyed each visit from the flamboyant Figalilly family, the frequencies and mysterious motives of the visits did concern him.

It was one visit from a particular "family friend" that threatened not only the secure, well-functioning and happy family they had become, but also the Professor's private social life. He was selfishly having all of his social and emotional needs met, paying little or no attention to the needs of any of the women in his life, particularly to Nanny's. He never considered her need to have a home, husband or children of her own. She seemed to belong to them, but he never stopped to think if she believed they belonged to her.

When Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh showed up the Professor wondered, with admittedly no evidence to support his wonderings, if her family hadn't sent him. True, Nanny had said Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh had an "impetuous" nature, but the man seemed to accept her refusal to marry him in stride. Either because that too was his nature, or because he had the flawless belief she would someday come to her senses and marry him. Tradition, family pride, and a lifetime of conditioning and unquestioning acceptance would make her his bride. Destiny! Preordained in the stars! How ridiculous it all was and how ridiculous that even now the Professor frowned when thinking of the man. It was true Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh did possess similar "charms" as the Figalilly clan, and under different circumstances the Professor would have liked him and enjoyed his company and his stories as much as he had enjoyed any of Nanny's relatives. But as circumstances were, he was admittedly very content with the fact that the man had remained "mostly there" for the last several years.

Shaking off any lingering annoyance he turned his attention back to the still dark pre-dawn sky and smiled a little in thanks to Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh. After all, it was his visit that had brought to the surface the Professor's confused and conflicted feeling regarding Nanny. No. That wasn't right. His feelings had never been confused, but ignored and repressed. And he had never felt conflicted either. Granted, she wasn't at all similar to his usual choices when it came to women. He favored "intellectual and professional" women. He had met his late wife as a fellow graduate student, and most of the other women he had dated were professional colleagues. And at that time, he had no idea that the intelligent and insightful woman who was sharing his home was actually an Oxford graduate with advanced degrees. All the Professor knew was she was a remarkably efficient nanny and housekeeper, and demonstrated uncanny, outside-the-probability-curve consistent lucky guesses and coincidences. He still refused to believe it was more than that—most of the time.

Although he couldn't quite believe in second sight or precognition, he did believe in Nanny. He didn't want to change her and never sought to control whatever it was she did or how she did it. He respected her for who she was and had no cause to be apprehensive about her gifts or abilities. He accepted it, as he accepted her, her family, and in how she chose to see the world with unflinching optimism. And he more than accepted it; he loved her all the more because of and not in spite of the differences between them.

Love. That's what it all came down to eventually. The Professor remembered telling his oldest son once an example of two things that you couldn't explain that were very real: luck and love. And both had played a significant part in his life. It had been lucky that Nanny had chosen his family to mend, that she had chosen to stay with them, that her family had come to challenge her, and that Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh had come to challenge them both.

The Professor thought back to that time as the first time he had felt genuine confusion about a women. As his feelings became clearer and stronger for her everyday, he felt more uncertain how to act around her. He'd never been particularly shy or awkward around women, and was aware his good looks and personality attracted the opposite sex easily. But Nanny wasn't like the other women he had known. He was generally sure of a woman's interest before approaching her. However, it seemed that as easy as it appeared for her to be able read him, was as difficult as it was for him to read her. Was Nanny aware of his growing attraction to her, his desires, his slowing falling deeply in love with her? If she was aware, it was a good sign she hadn't left the household already. But she certainly wasn't giving him any clear signals and he was sure she wouldn't make a first move herself. Would it be worth taking a chance at driving her away? Did he have the right to put his family's happiness in jeopardy for his own needs?

He knew she was engaged, or at least the Professor _thought_ she was still engaged. When Nanny had sent Cholmondeley away, she had told the Professor, "You are stuck with me for at least another year". That sounded almost like a challenge. And he had heard it as a deadline. When Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh appeared again, just a few months later claiming both families were demanding her decision and forcing her hand - literally - it was her clearly miserable response and her pain and sadness towards her impending departure that brought the Professor to her. His intention was not to convince her to stay for himself or for his family, or to declare his feelings for her. His only intention was to give her a chance to talk to him as her friend. He realized he genuinely cared for her and wished her to regain her happiness and peace of mind. Seeing Nanny's turmoil and pain hurt him intensely. If she made the choice to leave, the Professor was determined it would be with his support and friendship. He would do his best to understand and accept her decision, and as hard as it would be for him, her contentment and her needs were all that mattered now.

As the Professor watched the last stars disappear from the eastern sky this morning, he remembered the starry late evening sky the night he had found Nanny alone in the backyard. The tiny, silver, sliver of a moon did not cast much light, but he could see she had been crying. It surprised him when she told him how her obligations to her family weighed on her heavily against the wishes of her heart. She wanted to stay, telling him she was happier here than she had ever been in her life, and couldn't imagine her life away from this family or from him. When she began to cry again, the Professor took her into his arms trying to believe he held her in friendship and concern, brushing his lips against her soft hair. But when Nanny lifted her face to him he kissed her, and in that first, gentle kiss he knew he could never let her go.

First kiss, first caress, first murmured words of love. On this morning that night seemed very far away and the decisions they made then seemed simple. Nanny didn't leave. The Figalilly and the Featherstonehaugh families both survived the news and a whole lifetime of firsts began to unfold. Those firsts baffled the Professor's neat, ordered ideas of what was probable in his life although he thoroughly enjoyed each new experience. There was a first date complete with their first childless dinner, a first dance where he learned how sensual just holding the woman you love in your arms can be, first glimpse of your bride wearing her great-grandmother's wedding dress for _you, _first time making love…

The first time they had made love was certainly not his first time, although it had felt to him as if it was. A nervous bridegroom, the Professor had told himself to be patient and gentle and to have faith in how much they loved one another. But seeing his wife come to their bed for the first time, and lying in his arms for the first time, he felt any apprehension dissolve. What knowledge he had from previous lovers meant nothing, what he learned from her and she from him created and made love anew. Her unique gift of anticipating him had new expression now, and their connection through love, respect, understanding and acceptance gave the word _marriage_ true meaning in their lives.

Harold Everett noticed the sky was finally beginning to show brightness on the horizon. The morning following their wedding night they had watched the sun come up, and today was dawning exactly as it had that day nearly two years ago. He suddenly longed to see his Phoebe again, and turned impatiently when he heard soft footsteps behind him.

"Sir," a nurse in a crisp, white uniform interrupted his thoughts, "you can go in now."

He followed her down the hallway, straightening the tunic of his wilted blue surgical scrubs. Harold was eager and just a little anxious to see her even after so short a separation. He opened the door to her hospital room slowly.

Phoebe was sitting up in bed, her lustrous, blond hair held back with a simple band. She was wearing a lacy bed jacket in a shade of blue that matched her eyes. Hearing the door open, she looked up at him and smiled. Her face was radiant in the soft light.

"Hi," he whispered, smiling back. "How's everybody doing?"

"I'd say we're fine," Phoebe looked down at the gurgling baby in her arms. "But I think she is missing her Daddy."

He came to stand next to the bed and leaned over them both. "Are you now?" he said gently to the small bundle wrapped in a pink blanket. "And what about her mother?" Harold looked into his wife's eyes and she smiled at him again.

"I missed you, too," she whispered leaning towards him.

He closed the small distance between them and kissed her lips tenderly. "I love you," he murmured.

"I love you," Phoebe said against his lips.

The baby squirmed and made a quiet sound. The both looked down at her.

"Another chaperone," he said wryly. "You know," Harold told the baby, "there are three more mood breakers just like you at home."

"Have you told them?" she asked.

"No," he was stroking the baby's smooth cheek with one gentle finger. "I wanted you two to myself a little longer this morning." He looked at his lovely wife again. "Did I thank you for this?"

Phoebe smiled again. "She is a 'Happy New Year' present."

"The first baby born in the New Year in town," he said proudly, straightening and standing taller. Looking at his new daughter again Harold said, "She could be a late Christmas present, or even a belated birthday gift." He was referring to his birthday in late December.

"More likely she is _my_ birthday gift," his wife replied. "My birthday was about nine months ago in April, and if you remember, that trip we took alone to wine country in Napa Valley was…"

"Like a second honeymoon," he smiled and leaned over for another kiss. "I remember. Ah, so that was when…"

Their daughter interrupted again with a gurgle and a sound that resembled a giggle. Harold looked at the child suspiciously, then at Phoebe. "She isn't…she isn't…like you, is she?"

"Hard to say," she said lightly. Then peering at her daughter closely she remarked, "She is half Figalilly you know. It wouldn't surprise me in the least."

"Two of you," he grumbled good-naturedly. Then he smiled again. Looking at the fair, blond, blue-eyed girl he said, "Well, I'd hoped she would look just like you and it seems I got my wish."

"I think she has your eyes," Phoebe said warmly smiling up at him again. "That's what _I_ wished for."

"What are you going to name her?" Harold asked knowing how much debate she and her family had over an appropriate name befitting the newest member of the Figalilly clan.

"Melissa," she answered. It had been a name they both liked.

"Melissa," he acknowledged. Then he said to the baby, "Welcome to the world Melissa Figalilly Everett." He kissed his daughter's forehead.

The baby yawned. Phoebe lifted suddenly tired eyes to her husband's then stroked his rough cheek. "We've all been up all night. You need to go home and tell the children and get some sleep. Melissa and I need some rest too, and we're both going to need to see all of you later." She smiled at Melissa and at him then asked. "How does it feel to be a new father again?"

Harold Everett looked at the girl his wife held then lifted the small bundle in his arms. Looking into eyes so like his own, he remembered holding her for the first time in the delivery room. He had been there through it all, the panting and the pushing, and had heard Melissa's first cry. He had been the first one to hold his new daughter, screaming and squirming and slippery against his chest. Then he had brought her to her mother, all three of them crying, and saw his beautiful wife become a mother for the first time. It was an experience denied to him with his late wife and his three other children. A father's presence in the delivery room was uncommon in the 1960's, even in California. At this moment Harold Everett was overwhelmed with gratitude that probability or even fate had favored the happenings in his life and he had witnessed the miracle of Melissa's birth.

As he held his youngest child now he looked towards the dawn with his wife. Then he reached for Phoebe's hand and held it tightly.

"It feels like the first time," he told her.

Author's note: Wishing a Happy Father's Day to all! This story is intended as a tribute and in thanks to the wonderful creators, writers and actors of this fabulous and much overlooked 70's sit com. This story was also inspired by the creative works of two terrific writers on who brought back wonderful memories of this charming and inventive television show. And thanks to all of you readers for appreciating when television presented gentle lessons and traditional family values.


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